


the rambling soldier

by Zsazsa4



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas! sort of, Implied/Referenced Cannibalism, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, playing fast and loose with arctic geography
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:33:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25243942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zsazsa4/pseuds/Zsazsa4
Summary: Hickey and Tozer survive the Tuunbaq and set out into an Arctic autumn.'It had never made him feel particularly guilty, killing a man. The first time had been awkward, botched; the next few thrilling; and after that it became routine. It still got your heart thumping and your blood pounding but it was never the same as before you knew what it could be. But he couldn't muster up the force to unshoulder his rifle, aim and fire at Hickey, to do anything other than trudge on.'
Relationships: Cornelius Hickey/Sgt Solomon Tozer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	the rambling soldier

**Author's Note:**

> Hail smiling morn, smiling morn / that tips the hills with gold, that tips the hills with gold, / at whose bright presence darkness flies away

They had walked on and on. When he’d woken up Crozier had gone off somewhere, he thought, he didn’t think he could see his body although he couldn’t be sure. Left him behind, which wasn’t altogether a bad thing. He wasn’t much in the mood to take orders. Probably would rather have taken them than died but he couldn’t say for certain. Left him behind with Hickey, though, or whatever his name was, who sat silent and cross-legged a few yards away. Were he Crozier he would have shot them both. Tozer had stripped the camp and the bodies of whatever was both useful and portable but still been left with too much to carry alone. He’d filled a few canvas bags and dumped the heavier ones, which he made sure had no knife and nothing sharp, at Hickey’s feet. He was feeling better, stronger, from the meat he’d taken off that thing. He had an idea he ought not to be eating it but he couldn’t stop himself gorging on it until he nearly fetched it up again, raw most of the time although the taste disgusted him, day after day until some of his strength came back and the possibility of leaving that charnel house dawned on him. It was that or go back to eating men, if it even mattered. It’d eaten so many of them itself that probably there were bits of Hodgson or Pilkington in it anyway and now in him. ‘Get up,’ he said. ‘I can’t carry all this myself.’

‘This one’s heavier,’ Hickey said, testing it. ‘Why should I have to take it?’ He looked worse than he had before, even after eating that thing’s meat. Pinched and sunken.

Tozer shrugged. ‘I’m bigger than you.’

‘Then you should take the heavier one.’

‘No,’ Tozer said, triumphant, ‘I’m bigger than you, so you do what I tell you. Or you can just stay here.’

Hickey slowly got to his feet. ‘Whatever you say. Should I call you sergeant?’

‘I don’t give a toss,' Tozer said. ‘Don’t pretend you’re doing what I say because of that. You’re doing it because I could leave you behind or fetch you a smack. Let’s have that clear.’

Hickey had shrugged but he hadn’t disagreed, and then they’d walked. South, at least, although he had very little idea where they were going other than that. He’d barely any clue how to use a sextant, let alone a theodolite. Soon enough Hodgson’s watch broke and would not be coaxed into going again, and then he’d no way to take their longitude, not that he’d been doing a very good job of it before. They started seeing game but it wasn’t the expected sort, no caribou, or even any of that lichen stuff, but seals, bears. Not what they’d been told to expect but he knew they’d been lied to, to coax them to keep hauling. By this point they’d exhausted the last bits of meat they’d stripped off the thing and hadn’t eaten for days. Tozer’s heart pounded in his chest and he felt dizzy. He kept checking to see if the burns on his hand were opening up again. They didn’t get worse but they’d stopped getting better. He was consumed by the thought that Hickey would kill him; had somehow tricked Tozer into thinking it was his own plan that brought the two of them along together. That he was a walking larder and every day they didn’t eat he was of less use. He’d been brought along as a pig to a market; easier to slaughter it there than to preserve and lug the meat, but he had less and less meat on him. If they didn’t find game in three days he’d kill Hickey before he could kill him. Two, two would be better, that way he’d take him by surprise. Or today, now. His fingers twitched at his gun; he had done this more than a few times and it would be the work of a moment to unshoulder it, aim and fire. It had never made him feel particularly guilty, killing a man; in fact he had not felt much from it at all for a fair bit. The first time had been awkward, botched; the next few thrilling; and after that it became routine. It still got your heart thumping and your blood pounding but it was never the same as before you knew what it could be. Somehow he couldn’t muster the force needed to shoot Hickey. He could see it in his mind’s eye but couldn’t make himself do anything that took more strength than trudging onwards.

But then he shot a seal and they ate it nearly raw. He even scooped some of the blubber straight into his mouth, gagging from its rank fishiness but craving it all the same. They melted down a bit of the blubber, used it to fry the blood into pancakes, and scraped out the pan. They got a white bear, they got another ring seal, some birds. A bounty of food, between the two of them. They didn’t talk much, just camped, packed and walked. Tozer was too angry at him to talk to him. It would be easier if he could just dismiss him. It would have been easier if he’d just left him at the camp. After all, they’d kept jettisoning enough rubbish that he might just about be able to carry everything himself by now, although he’d be a good bit slower. He told himself it was better to have Hickey here, in front of him, even if he suspected Hickey had come along in order to have a source of food. But they were going the wrong way for Hickey, south, and, he suspected, east. Eventually he gave up all idea of finding Back’s River, they had no boats anyway, and they just set out south and east towards the coast. And then, finally, the weather started turning. The days were perceptibly shorter. He didn’t know how long they’d been walking - he’d lost all notion of time beyond the very vague idea of a day - but thought their travelling season had come to an end. There was nowhere obvious to stay, but he just picked a place where they had a brief glut of game and hoped it would last. They pitched the tent and buttressed around it with rocks, had a go at mortaring them with a foul paste made of blubber and soot from the lamp, which didn’t burn the blubber well. He had a go at digging a cesspit but was defeated by the rocks. They had no more walking to do, and then they had to speak. 

He woke up that night to Hickey crouching over him. He could barely make him out in the gloom, but he could hear his breathing and smell the reek coming off him, heightened somehow. It seemed inevitable, for a second - then Hickey reached out to grab the knife, he didn’t have it yet, and Tozer thumped him and sent him back on his arse. 

‘No need for that,’ Hickey said, hand cradling his jaw. ‘It’s not me you should be afraid of. I just want it back so I can get on for myself. I’d be in a right state if you died and I’d not a tool on me.’

‘Then you could just rob it back off me. And you wouldn’t even have to kill me to do it.’

Hickey looked at him as if he were stupid, worse than stupid, with a patronising attempt at kindness. ‘I told you, it’s not me you’ve to be afraid of. You’re under my protection here. I don’t mean to kill you.’ 

Tozer would almost rather he had; almost. ‘Some protection that is, as you tried it before.’

‘Things have changed since before.’ 

Tozer considered doing Hickey with the boat knife. It would be easier, probably, not to have to watch his back and not to wake up through the night with his suspicions. But the effort of even hitting Hickey had exhausted him, and he just wanted to go back to sleep. 

‘Come on, Sol, what will I do if you drown?’

‘You’ll just have to hope you can drag the body out. Then you’ll be set.’ He lay back down, on his back. He didn’t want to turn his back on Hickey, but much less did he want to face him. ‘You aren’t going to hurt me, what do you want the knife for then?’

‘I could’ve smashed your head in with the pot, or with a tent pole. I don’t need that to kill you.’ Tozer went for the boat knife and Hickey grinned at him, his teeth dull in the darkness. ‘No you don’t. You can’t, anyway, even if you wanted to. This place won’t let you kill me until it’s done with me and it’s not done with me yet.’

Tozer shook his head. He’d thought they were done with this, or at least that Hickey would keep it to himself. ‘We’re leaving here. We’re walking out of here and we’ll fetch up somewhere. And we ate it. We killed it and we ate it. I don’t believe a word you say but even if I did that protection’s no kind of protection. We shan’t fetch up at the Pacific, though, I can tell you that much.’

‘You’ve been to the other side, haven’t you. The Mediterranean and that. Tell me about it again, love, east.’

‘West, if you go far enough.’ Sometimes he suspected that Hickey didn’t quite believe that the world joined up, that you couldn’t sail off the edge. Hickey didn’t know things that he thought every man - every Englishman, that is - would know as a matter of course, that the rudest, stupidest private knew.

Hickey reached out and brushed at the raw patch on Tozer’s cheek. ‘It’s started mending, that. Does it hurt if I touch it?’ Meaning to hit him away, Tozer instead clutched at his hand, smaller than his own, and pressed it harder to his cheek. No blemish on Hickey’s face, still, no cracked and bleeding lips. ‘Do you want me to?’ Tozer nodded and closed his eyes, felt Hickey brush his lips, put two fingers gently at his mouth. He opened his lips and ran his tongue around them, took them into his mouth. He felt himself start to harden, after weeks and weeks and months of no luck, such that he’d thought himself permanently dead, avoided looking when he pissed. It struck him with such surprise that he tried to speak. ‘It can wait a moment. Not with your mouth full.’ Tozer sucked a little at his fingers, took them deeper into his mouth. He kept his eyes closed until Hickey pulled them out, slow and gentle. 'You have to ask me for what you want. You have to say it.’

He hesitated. Before, keeping his mouth shut had always been the best course of action. Hickey wouldn’t have dared smack him but he could say things almost as bad.

‘Tell me, love.’

‘You know what I want you to do.’

‘Is he back, then?’ 

Sol laughed. ‘Yeah, he’s back. Thank God.’

Hickey pushed him gently down on the tarpaulin and the stinking uncured pelts, unbuttoned his trousers and took his braces off his shoulders. ‘Lie down now.’ He turned him onto his side so that he faced the tent and pushed his trousers down around his knees, slotted himself in beside Tozer so that Tozer could feel his cock pressed up against his arse through Hickey’s underclothes. Christ, at least they could do this again now, they’d had no luck at it the last few weeks at the camp. ‘Legs together, Sol. Tighter. That’s good, that’s very good.’ Hickey pulled his slops down and spat on his hand, got his cock wet. He thrust in between Tozer’s legs and Tozer could feel him against his arse, up against his balls and against the skin between. Tozer gasped for breath, tried to choke himself off - Hickey hadn’t even got a hand on his cock yet. He hadn’t expected it to be this sharp, everything to return at once. He tugged Hickey’s fingers back up to his mouth then took himself in hand. Blood rushed to his face and chest, he squeezed his eyes shut as he roughly brought himself off. He managed to spill into his hand and onto the ground rather than on his clothes, nearly choked on Hickey’s fingers in his mouth. 

‘Oh, that was quick. Suppose it’s been a while.’ Hickey kept fucking his thighs, the rut of his cock against Tozer’s balls almost painful. He held onto Tozer tightly, maybe to stop him trembling. At last he grunted against Tozer’s shoulder and came, his spunk on Tozer’s thighs, took his fingers out of his mouth and wiped them on Tozer’s trousers. ‘Easy there, easy, now, love. Shh, it’s all right. No need for tears. Let me clean you up. Don’t fret, we can lie down together. There we are, tell me about Malta again.’

He ought not let Hickey hold him like that - although he still had the knife it wouldn’t be too hard for Hickey to get it back off him. But he was bone-tired, too tired to move. He felt like a broken-winded, broken down old horse. Fit for the knackers.

‘Come on, Sol. Malta.’

They’d spoken a lot, before. Tozer had told him compulsively about his childhood, working on the docks and the line before joining up, about his postings. He dwelt on every bit of England he’d seen, which wasn’t an awful lot and which he’d generally not been too taken with at the time. But every good Christmas or misremembered golden summer appeared to him over and over. He’d thought it a mark of - something - that he’d entrusted it to Hickey, but the doctor had told them it was a symptom of scurvy, nothing more. Hickey never much cared unless he was telling him about when he’d spent years all around the Mediterranean and Arabia. He told Hickey stories about that, judging what would interest him, embellishing and leaving bits out. That night when Hickey asked him about it he hadn’t spoken of it in - months, he supposed. He didn’t know how many.

‘Malta. Christ, you always want to hear about Malta. All right then, I’ll tell you what I haven’t before. I couldn’t get off the seat Beirut to Sidon, I had a bout of the clap in Malta, and then to top it all off I had a repeating fever on the way home. Not as bad as Aden, though, that was the worst of all, I was shitting blood for weeks in Aden. It was all right, that, it’s not the worst posting, but I shouldn’t think my bottom half will ever recover from it.’

Hickey was silent for a second, then said, fiercely, ‘Were you just taking the piss when you told me about it before?’

‘Nah,’ he said, ‘why would I bother? Just told you what I thought you’d enjoy. It wasn’t like you were ever going to make it to Syria to check. Not like I’m going to make it back to Syria.’

‘I have been interested,’ Hickey said, ‘in where exactly you’re going. Because as far as I can make out we’re going backwards.’

Tozer’s heart stopped. ‘We’ve been going north?’ he cried out, it was wrenched out of him. ‘Why didn’t you stop me?’

‘Oh, no,’ Hickey said. ‘East I meant. I suppose you think you’re going to find the ocean and then meander down looking for some kind of port and then go back to England.’

‘I hadn’t got that far,’ he said. ‘But it would be Hudson Bay, maybe. I’m not sure.’ He was so grateful they were in fact going south that he could start crying again. He hadn’t exactly been thinking, but he had had vague ideas of getting back to England. A bit of leave, a new posting, and maybe he could forget all of this, but he couldn’t imagine the bit in the middle -

‘Liar,’ Hickey said. ‘What, you suppose they’ll make you colour sergeant? Think again. You turn up there on your own with no commander, they’ll have to court martial you. Hundred odd men dead. Two ships lost, what’s more. And they won’t like that, that you’ve come back with no officers. What exactly did you say happened to Sir John? Captain Crozier? Commander Fitzjames? They died? When? How? Tell us again. And again. And you’ll be lying, you’re a bad liar, and you’ll make mistakes and you’ll get caught. Then the drop.’

‘They get knighted,’ Tozer said, lost and angry. ‘When they come back losing the ships. Before, they always did.’

‘You’d be lucky just to be drummed out and not be hanged. As you should be, you being a mutineer and a cannibal besides, worse than a savage.’

‘Where are you going if you know so much about it?’

‘Nowhere, until spring,’ Hickey said. ‘Then we’ll just have to see. If we’re still around together. Could be worse, you know. We’ve laid in a few of those bears, we’ve got that blubber stuff for the lamps. Got a mate to pass the time with.’ He eyed Tozer slyly.

Tozer shook his head in disbelief. ‘You’re not touched by it. Even now you’re not touched by it. You never take a look at yourself and think - I’ve gone wrong here, I’ve done wrong here.’

‘Who’s touched by it, you? Because you keep snivelling at night when you think I can’t hear you - yes, I always hear you, whining to yourself about God and hell and the rest of it, which is very dull, as it happens, and you don’t even have the grace to believe in any of it. When have you ever been in a church of your own want? I see you too, better than you see yourself, and you’re scared, not guilty. Mithering on about your boys like you didn’t nick their kit and strip their bodies sharpish. Like you wouldn’t have - ah - put their corpses to use, let’s say.’

‘You shut up,’ Tozer said, voice wobbling.

Hickey sneered at him. ‘Christ, do you ever give it a rest, you’re worse than a woman, you’re worse than any Mary-Anne. Except that you’ve such a mucky arse I can’t even fuck you.’ Fussy, he looked fussy, prissy even.

He flushed up, self-conscious about the problems he’d been having with his stomach, with the way he kept finding himself in tears. ‘It’s rich, that, you talking about muck and turning your nose up. It was you, wasn’t it, did that shit in Gibson’s bed? He said it was the dog and I never seen it myself but there was talk floating around it didn’t look like a dog had done it. It was a proper laugh though, I have to say. Cheered us all up, except maybe Billy. Poor old Billy Gibson, let you fuck him even after that. And by Christ you paid him back for it.’

Hickey practically snarled at him. ‘You still let me fuck you. Or you would, if I wanted to. You’d let me do everything I did to Billy. You’d beg me for it, Sol, just to keep me here so that you don’t have to be alone with what you’ve done and who you are. You’re a coward.’

‘With what we’ve done, mind.’

‘Why do you think you’re still here? Forget all that shite about hell. You’re rotten. You taste too bad. I’m not talking about promotions or medals or court martials or hangings now, although I’ve the right of it there. If you get home - on the small chance they don’t just hang you - you won’t know anyone there. You’re not the same man that went away, because you’ve killed him. You’re no more and no less Solomon Tozer than I am Cornelius Hickey. Would you ever think you’d have eaten a man - eaten men? Cut their boots off, boiled up their bones and sucked out the marrow?’

‘I had to do that. I’d no choice.’

‘You did have a choice. You do have a choice. You can keep going or you can die. Me, I’m going on. You know what I think you ought to do. But you can’t go back now, you can’t go back home to your family, or your mother. You can go forwards or you can sit down and die here.’

‘And you’d eat me. If I died.’

‘If I had to. I don’t exactly enjoy it, but needs must.’ Tozer let that one ride. ‘You’d eat me.’

‘Would you kill me to eat me? Is that why you’re here with me?’ Stupid, stupid. He’d taken the knife but Hickey could easily have bashed in his head with a rock while they lay here, him stupid with tears, grabbed him by the hair and smashed his face.

‘I’m here with you because I’ve got a better chance than without you.’

Tozer had no reply to that; he couldn’t puzzle out what Hickey meant, whether he intended to kill him or not. He had the satisfaction, at least, of rattling Hickey, who had dropped his imperturbable demeanour, dropped that smile. But he hadn’t won anything worth having.

They did pass the time together, in the end. It took on the contours of barracks life, a horrible parody. Days and days of unbearable boredom interspersed with gut-churning, trouser-shitting panic. A bear, emaciated and savage. A blizzard which threatened to blow the top off their sty. No drill, no cleaning other than the endless buggering about with the smoking, sputtering lamps. Meant for better days, whale-oil rather than blubber. They and everything about them was grimy with soot and fat. Kit check of a sort, he compulsively counted their ammunition every morning and every night, partly as a talisman and partly for something to do, and kept an anxious eye on the meat laid up outside. He thought they’d probably be all right, just, until they could get on the move again, but he had no firm idea of how long that would be. Hickey evidenced his now-usual lassitude; he didn’t seem much bothered by their forced idleness. He’d gone off somewhere into himself, now that they were no longer ravenous, just sick of meat, meat, only ever meat. 

‘What I’d do for an apple,’ Hickey said, abrupt and unexpected, in one dull stretch of twilight.

‘A bit of sweet,’ Tozer said. ‘A bun or a custard. I could just eat sugar out of a bowl. Plum jam or lemon curd.’

‘Bread. How can I miss bread, all I ever ate.’

Tozer shook his head. ‘If you’d told me as a kid I wouldn’t want meat every meal I’d have laughed in your face but I can barely stomach it.’

‘If you’d told me I’d be eating a white bear.’

‘I wouldn’t even have known what one was. God, I could do with a drink. Something nice, beer or something, I got sick to the back teeth of rum. It’d do the job, though. That’d be the best way to end it out here, I reckon. Get dead drunk and go outside and fall asleep.’

‘Surprised you haven’t. I thought you were done in. But you’re still going even though you can’t go back.’

Tozer had no good answer to that. If he’d had the rum, maybe. ‘Something to do, isn’t it. Might be interesting, see who dies first. Who eats who.’

Hickey laughed at that. Neither of them said how they’d lay their bets. ‘Getting brighter,’ Hickey said, contemplatively. ‘And it’s getting quicker to melt the water. We shall be on the move again soon, then?’

‘We’ve missed Christmas,’ Tozer said. He hated their makeshift camp but hated the idea of getting up and walking on. He thought of it as the Black Hole of Calcutta, a good private joke until he’d tried to explain it to Hickey, who had never heard of it, had no idea of where it was, even. For all his thoughts on the Sandwich Isles he’d no real idea where they were, either, anywhere outside of England, even most of England itself, was all the same to him. Everywhere Tozer had been, had spent hours telling him about, was the same to him; Arabia the same as India the same as the Atlantic the same as the Pacific. Hickey’s ignorance staggered him, impressed him almost. How could someone who’d never known anything invent all that. ‘Do you think it’s before or after Lady Day?’ He carefully pulled some things out of his shirt, hoarded against it. A little bit of chocolate, a meagre amount of dried fruit. 

Hickey stared at him. ‘You’re a lunatic,’ he said. ‘You’ve been wandering round for how long carrying that? Saving it? Starving with that on you?’

‘We haven’t been starving for a bit,’ he said, uncomfortable. ‘Got no tobacco, that’s what we’re really wanting. But this is a bit of something. For Christmas.’

‘Oh, fuck Christmas,’ Hickey said. ‘It must be months past anyway.’

Tozer had always liked Christmas but this was even more miserable than their last one on the ship. There wasn’t much point to it, really, without other people, and he was in a sorry state if he had to count Hickey as company. He realised, then, that he couldn’t bring to mind one of the memories he’d brought out the most to keep himself going, before it became too painful and he had to stop thinking of home entirely. It took place around Christmas and it had a sweet, drunken kiss from a girl before he staggered off. But he couldn’t think of where or when it had taken place, or who she’d been or even what she’d looked like. England, surely. But at Woolwich? Or back home, if he could call it home? It was like a lucky coin he’d rubbed at too often until the facing was worn down.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘Might as well eat it before we set off. We’ll have it against the future, then. Here’s to seals all the way. And a bear or two so long as they’re not too big.’

They ate. It didn’t take long. Tozer was torn whether to draw it out, savour it, or eat it and taste the thing properly. In the end he nibbled at the chocolate, gone chalky, but there was still just enough moistness and sweetness to the dried fruit that he had to chew it in a big, slow bite. Hickey watched him as he tried to lick a last bit of sweet off his fingers. Nothing, just dirt and the stale taste of meltwater.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had 'Hail Smiling Morn' stuck in my head for... too long now. If Tozer'd actually sung it Hickey would have been well within his rights to kill him. Some details of survival taken from Nansen's Fram expedition of 1893-6 (in... a completely different part of the Arctic oh well). I narrowly restrained myself from having them catch a walrus.


End file.
